The T-Mobile-Sprint merger still hasn’t officially been approved yet, prompting T-Mo CEO John Legere to press on in his promotional campaign that the merger will bring 5G nationwide.
Legere’s promotional campaign is an interesting one, particularly because of T-Mobile’s own shunning of 5G early on in the merger process. The majority Deutsche Telekom-owned company said that 5G wasn’t really 5G at the time and that it would “sit this one out,” but when it became clear that the FCC was interested in 5G, Team Magenta was all in to bring 5G to even rural communities, not just urban ones.
Legere says that T-Mobile and Sprint’s combined spectrum (T-Mobile’s high-band and low-band spectrum, Sprint’s mid-band spectrum) would ensure that all parts of the US would have 5G and not just major cities as will be the case initially. Sprint’s 2.5Ghz spectrum will ensure that T-Mobile’s network rolls out faster, though T-Mobile’s own internet speeds alone are stellar enough for top 5G performance.
Not only does Legere say that T-Mobile and Sprint’s merger would lead to a nationwide 5G rollout, but that The New T-Mobile (the proposed name for the carrier merger) would actually put pressure on Verizon and AT&T to get busy with rolling out their networks.
Of course, AT&T doesn’t have its 5G network rolled out fully just yet, but the Ma Bell carrier is getting 1.5Gbps to 2Gbps internet speeds in cities such as Atlanta, Georgia. Keep in mind, this is on the carrier’s 4G LTE network that was falsely marketed as “5G Evolution” but is really more like “4G Plus” than anything else.
The $26.5 billion merger has been a hot button topic for the last year with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Department of Justice (DoJ). 5G has been the emphasis for the carrier merger, as US officials want to see the new network speeds rolled out because of the overall improvements to the tech sector and society that the new technology will bring. T-Mobile has also promised that pricing on 5G plans will remain affordable for three years post-merger, in an effort to keep costs low for consumers.
Democrats who oppose the merger (all the state Attorneys General filing the recent anti-merger lawsuit are Democrat) say that the merger say that the combined new carrier will eliminate competition in the wireless industry, leaving four carriers to compete instead of three.
However, Dish may prove to be the surprise in it all, as the company is interested in purchasing the prepaid Sprint MVNO Boost Mobile as well as the required spectrum the carrier combo must offload before the DoJ approves the acquisition. At the same time, Dish says that it’s in no rush to acquire Boost Mobile or the offloaded airwaves, as it looks for a better financial bargain before signing the dotted line.
As of late, four states have filed lawsuits opposing the merger along with the ten states whose Attorneys General have filed. The lawsuits are being seen currently as an effort to block the advancement of 5G wireless in the United States.